1) Latter-day Dungeon Masterlike Legend of Grimrock has sold quite well. 600,000 copies or thereabouts, in fact.
2) This is well enough that IT LOOKS LIKE THEY’RE MAKING ANOTHER ONE AND IT HAS PLAYABLE RATMEN IN IT

“We would’ve been happy with just one tenth of the sales numbers,” say devs Almost Human, “so needless to say we’re very happy and the future of our company is secured for a long time.”

I don’t really believe that they’d have been happy with 60,000 copies sold, but never mind, mustn’t quibble. It’s a shame they didn’t hit seven figures, but the main thing is that they are left willing and able to something new. That something appears to be more Grimlock, as the untitled pair of sneak-peek screenshots rather strongly implies:

Is it a sequel or is it an expansion? Obviously it looks very similar to LoG, so perhaps we shouldn’t let our expectations run wild, but I think this is one of those instances where being given, simply, more would be lovely. Though I would very much like to see Almost Human turn their neo-classical design skills to something else: hopefully that will happen too.

Meantime, rat in a suit of armour:

A heroic Skaven, mayhap. I am down with that. Then there’s whatever the hell these guys are, too:

Has RPS just thrown in the towel with dealing with the spam bots? I regularly have non-linked posts with new content discarded as spam, while cut-and-paste comments with obvious link-bait (and often the same links) keep getting through…

If they follow EotB 2 then the next big thing will be an “Attack All” button for their time-sucking vampire game. It lived so much up to the hype.
If you don’t have played it yet you might want to seek therapy because there is something seriously wrong with you.

Funnily tho I say that they really should consider publishing on Android/iOS tablets, too.

The squaredancing was both too required and too fastpaced. I was tired of it with the very first spider in the entire game. So much that I went and played Dungeon Master from start to finish to recuperate. Which was not at all tiresome.

I personally LOVE the square dancing combat. It is REFRESHING compared to all the other RPGs I play of late. Turn-based doesn’t make an awesome RPG by default. Yes there are some very well done turn based RPGs, but this doesn’t mean it is a necessary component.

Not liking something doesn’t make it stupid. While it might not be appropriate for all titles, real-time combat worked quite well for half a million of us in Grimrock. The combat wasn’t deep enough for a turn-based system: substituting decision speed for decision depth was a way to keep the combat both engaging and difficult enough to keep the player’s attention. Real-time combat also meshed well with Grimrock’s other systems, all of which were time-based.

If you just don’t like real time combat, that’s fine, but don’t blame the designers for not adhering to your particular tastes: just buy a turn-based game instead of a real-time game.

600,000 copies is an excellent achievement, particularly given that the game is not exactly cheap (it isn’t expensive, but it is rather more expensive than things like Terraria). This must have made them a lot of money. Well deserved.

I used to like the kind of game that it looks like Grimrock is trying to be. But that was back in the early 90s, and my own tastes have changed a bit. Not to mention, it was a step forward then. Now, it is a nostalgic step back. (I’m not saying such nostalgia is a bad thing. In this case, it just isn’t my thing.)

These days, I mostly want real time with a single player, and mostly want party stuff to be turn based. And I’m not so fond of a controlling a party anymore regardless. (There are exceptions, but Grimrock doesn’t look like it would be one.)

Reminds me of the first time I played Eye of the Beholder when I was a wee’n.

I couldn’t work out how to attack, but discovered the throw item function. Thus I spent my entire time with the game pelting enemies with whatever I happened to have in my inventory. I once felled a goblin with a sandwich.

Grimrock was in Humble Indie Bundle 7 for people who donated over the average. Total sales for the bundle were just under 400,000, although I don’t think we know how many of those gave enough to unlock Grimrock. I wonder if it’s sales from that are included in the figures reported above?

A roguelike version would hold my interest as well, but you’d need loads more content for the engine to juggle with to keep the experience fresh every time… I’ve been spoiled by Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and friends.

I think they would. It’s a very little team for a very light prod. The polish in the UI makes it look neat but you’ve got something like 10 enemies, each with 2-3 anim max, a few simple settings and that’s it. If they make $600 000 of it I am pretty sure it make a nice profit. They must be more around 5 – 6 millions. They probably could all retire.

I can’t wait for more Grimrock. Did I know I needed Egyptian themed levels before today? No; but I now could not existing without them.

Seriously, why did BBC News 24 waste so much time today covering Obama’s inauguration; they could have been covering the latest Legend of Grimrock news!

And that Obama, he doesn’t know what he is talking about. What did he say, “I believe we are all created equal” or some nonsense? Bah; believe what you want Obama, but we are not all created equal. Minotaurs have high strength and hitpoints making them natural warriors. The Lizardman’s dexterity making them natures thieves (oh stow that “negative reinforcement” talk, you cannot leave your family silver around a lizardman and you know it!)…

I must admit I could never get the hang of Grimrock. The tile based first person movement kinda broke my brain and coupled with the endless identical stone walls, lack of much in the way of landmarks and my exceedingly poor sense of direction, I got tired of wandering in circles pretty quickly.

Grimrock needs to step up a lot in order to hold a candle to The Original (Dungeon Master). The game was good, and it was a brilliant move by the devs to fill an obvious (in retrospect) market niche. However, if you’ve played DM you will know the difference between merely a “good game” and a work of genius.

If somebody made DM’s monsters as 3D models, one could probably reproduce it quite faithfully with the Grimrock engine, now that the UI is moddable.